Difficult Questions
by Rice Buny
Summary: A notebook that Ichigo found abandoned on the sidewalk carries more power than his own sword. The question remains as Aizen, with a new plan, kidnaps Orihime who happens to have the book with her: save Orihime, who's disposable and not necessary in Aizen's plan and risk the world, or the notebook, who has the power and will certainly destroy the world if Aizen realizes what it is?


I own nothing of Bleach or Death Note.

* * *

"Ah-" his cry is stunted short as Rukia cracks the back of her knuckles against his cheek; sure, he was expecting a blow from her, especially after he decided to insult her drawing, yet, it doesn't prepare him from the harsh fist. "It's true!" He retorts, sputtering, glaring at the short shinigami, who glowers back in response, clutching her notepad. "It does look like a hollow!" he adds, continuing to stand by his claim. It does, the creature she tried to draw doesn't resemble a shinigami at all. Rather, the doodle resembles a sinister creature, with the same structure as the devilish creatures.

"You know, it really isn't that bad," Ishida calmly points out, readjusting his square glasses. Rukia beams in delight as his comment, but it's quickly turned into a frown with his following words: "But it's clearly ugly enough for Ichigo to mistake it for a hollow." Without another word, allowing her sinister glare to speak for her, she brings down the notepad hard against the teenager's head, and he nonchalantly bats it away, however, Ichigo notices how he flinches slightly away from Rukia. "We really should get back to the matter at hand, now, Rukia, why did you draw those...things?" he clears his throat.

Ichigo honestly isn't sure why this small notebook with the ebony cover caused Rukia to immediately gather their small group for a meeting. He flips through the pages, skimming through them, even, and sure enough, they're all blank. The only thing that's written at all on this entity are the words 'Death Note' in an interesting font, engraved on the cover of the book. "Now, these creatures are actually shinigamis." Rukia begins, tapping one of her fingers at the horrifying crayon creatures she drew.

"Those are shinigamis? They do look a lot like hollows. Except usually they're not as ugly." Yoruichi purrs, licking her glossy fur on her slim cat body. Rukia remains mute, however her expression is dark and stormy, something that Ichigo is quite familiarized upon. She rips her drawing out of the notepad, and crumples it up with one fist, and tosses both the balled up paper and notepad over her shoulder. Quite admirable, Ichigo admits, as the rumpled up paper lands neatly in the wastebin next to his bed, however, the notepad whacks against the closet door that she sleeps behind, before sliding down and ruffling up the papers within.

"They're supposed to look like that!" Rukia snaps.

"I think they're fine," Orihime comments, brushing aside her auburn bangs. "What do you think?" she turns to Chad, remaining in her animated, peppy attitude. Chad just shrugs in response, his ebony locks curling against his forehead. "Anyways, please continue," she clasps her hands together cheerfully. Ichigo smirks at her joyful manner, before turning to Rukia, who inhales sharply, probably fed up with Ichigo intervening with her words, and insulting her drawings.

"So, those shinigamis, are above us. There are many shinigamis in the world, however, we're kind of like hollows, you know, they're split into three main parts, stuff like that. We're the lower level, and the higher level are those shinigamis. They're supposed to look like hollows, well, in the fashion of those creatures-" Ichigo shrugs as Rukia glares nastily at him. "So your insult isn't valid," she adds, and Ichigo just rolls his eyes in response. "They live in a completely other world, nobody's sure where, but it's not heaven or hell, from what I heard. And they always carry around a Death Note," she points at the item within Ichigo's hands, and he turns to it, his attention captured.

"What are they for?" he inquires eagerly.

"I'm getting to it," she snaps, miffed by him interjecting once more. He can't help it. "Now, we, like me, Byakuya, Renji, we are supposed to release souls and hollows, sending them to hell or soul society, right?" they all nod, quite familiar on this basic information. "Now, these shinigamis, they kill people." she stops, probably for dramatic effect. Ishida and Ichigo blink, ready for her to continue, greedy for more information, while Orihime flinches.

"Oh, that's right, I heard of them before." Yoruichi shifts back into a human form, and Ichigo, ready for this, grabs a nearby towel and tossing it over the slim, naked figure, and though it's obvious that she's comfortable with or without clothes, she nestles within the towel, probably from her cat behavior of snuggling on Ichigo's blankets all the time. "They write the name in the Death Note, and within a period of time, the person dies, right?" she finishes.

Rukia nods, confirming what the lady just said. "That's horrible!" Orihime gasps, and then, thrusts her finger dramatically at the book within Ichigo's calloused fingers. "We must burn it before anyone else can use it!" she proclaims.

"Whoa, what?" Chad says. "I mean, it might be for the better," he admits slowly. "But we should probably first learn a bit about it." he explains. "Tell us more."

"Well," Rukia says. "It's actually around forty-seconds. The person will die of a heart attack after forty-seconds of his or her name being written in the book," she explains. "However, there are certain rules written in the book, that the shinigami must follow, so that it may not have too much power from the book." Ichigo frowns, his eyebrows scrunching together. Now, he was not expecting that. He's sure that he didn't find a single scribble in any of the pages, other than lines to indicate where to write. He starts from the beginning of the book, and realizes, how the first thin sheet seems to be slightly stuck to the cover. He peels it back, revealing white words scrawled in the same interesting font of the title was written in, on the back of the front cover.

"What does it say?" Ishida demands.

"I don't know, the font's so weird! Geez, even Rukia's drawings are more distinguishable than these words!" Ichigo winces as the dull pain throbs around his cheek, where Rukia slapped him in one fluid motion.

* * *

"What are we going to do with this?" Chad asks. "It's clearly dangerous." After going through all the precautions, it's clear that whoever writes a name in it will become the owner, and will not be able to enter soul society or hell, rather, he or she will go to the place where other shinigamis live. "Do you think there's one of those shinigamis around right now?" It's also been mentioned how the shinigami could be hanging around them.

"No, you think we'd notice it with our heightened spiritual senses, because if this shinigami is very powerful, then it'd probably also have a very high and noticeable spiritual aura." Ishida points out.

"Actually," Rukia begins, knotting her lips, clearly distasteful upon this idea. "We should've seen him just by touching the book, I suspect." she says. "And it should be nearby, it's like the sword to the regular shinigami; it wouldn't just have...dropped it, right?"

"No, the real question is what it's doing here," Yoruichi shakes her head, her flowing hair brushing against her waist as she does so. "No shinigami would be careless enough to just drop it, right?"

 _"Actually_ ," Orihime coughs, sputtering out her scalding tea at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. The others yelp or emit some sort of noise to imply they just heard the low, husky voice. "I did. I was quite bored." Orihime whips around, her tea sloshing in its cup, and down the front of her attire and dribbling down her chin, to come face to face with a creature bent down low to face her. "I'm Ryuk, now that we got the formalities out of the way-" Orihime recoils slightly, cringing, as the creature skirts around her in his oddly figured legs, his mouth hardly moving as he speaks. "Would you mind if I steal some of your apples?"

* * *

Having this thing around is unnerving. Even Rukia seems slightly off-put by this large shinigami, that absolutely none of them can sense, not even Ishida, awkwardly standing in the corner of the classroom. Ichigo cannot concentrate on his class-well, he rarely does, but this Ryuka dude is seriously beginning to creep him out. Probably because he doesn't blink.

Rukia inhales sharply, narrowing her eyes, as Ryuka reaches for the apple sitting calmly on the teacher's desk. She's sure that it'd seem suspicious to the class if there's a randomly floating apple. Thankfully, Ryuka doesn't reach any further with his lethal claws. Rukia is actually having no problem with Ryuka after observing him walking around in the classroom for five minutes. He's just lounging around. Rather, she's quite excited to see what she can do with the Death Note, however, she's unsure of whether or not she should touch it, after all, she's a shinigami, even if she's not the same type, unlike humans, the rule about 'dying because you loved a human or save a human' is probably for her as well and Ichigo. They're both shinigami, so she's sure that if either of them touch it, and randomly kill a person, they're goners.

Orihime isn't one to judge quickly just by appearance, after all, this man has not yet pose any threat or done anything wrong. Rather, he has quite an adorable attitude when he's not trying to get them to write in the notebook, especially when he's begging for apples. He has quite an obsession with them, pretty soon, Orihime's sure that all of them are going to have to go to the market and buy more of the crispy fruit.

Normally, Ishida would automatically not trust him. Even to the most weakest opponents, he tries to not underestimate them, even if that happens a lot, especially that time with Renji and the scientist brat. However, it's obvious that Ryuka is the shinigami that Rukia and Yoruichi mentioned, and he did claim that this black notebook sitting in the drawer of Ichigo's desk was his. However, even if he's just doing his job by killing off people because they have to, he dislikes the fact. Yes, while these shinigami kill souls and Rukia and Ichigo's type try and save them, and it's just the cycle, he cannot help but feel as though it's slightly horrible how they decide who lives and who dies. Rukia explained more then once how without these shinigamis, nobody can die. And yes, while they don't choose who dies at the time and only write down names that are supposed to have their lifespan cut off by then, and that there will be severe consequences such as death if a shinigami doesn't perform this correctly, he cannot help but feel as though this is unfair and a cruel system.

* * *

Yoruichi sighs, munching on this particular human food, chips, as she lazily strolls inside of Ichigo's bedroom. Now, his living quarters is quite small, however, she'll live. Without Ichigo's knowledge, yesterday, she snuck in, and Rukia allowed her, and they both fell asleep in the cushioned closet. Apparently Rukia has a thing for pillows, as the insides of the closet seems even more compact with the amount of pillows and cushions stuffed into it. She doesn't mind-Yoruichi is rather fond of this.

"So, you're the new girl?" Continuing to munch her chips, she turns around. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a slightly scruffy stuffed animal sitting upon Ichigo's drawer, along with pictures of his adorable sisters. She shoves more of these fried potatoes into her mouth. "Answer me?"

"Oh, a talking stuffed animal?" She suspected something of the sort, judging by how last night she heard many muffled voices outside, one that's actually shouting and pristine clear, which obviously belonged to Ichigo, and another, which she didn't identify or ask. This must the source of the mysterious voice last night. "How cute," she smiles wolfishly.

"Cute?" the plush lion squeals, setting his rounded knobs that are sewed to his body, acting as though his arms, flail up in the air excitedly.

"Hm," Yoruichi shrugs, turning away from the chattering lion. This is quite an interesting household, she takes note, recalling how in the morning, rather than having Rukia or Yoruichi wake him up, as she suspected, thinking that Rukia would be the one to slam him with a pillow and off the bed, a boisterous man stumbled up rather, shouting at Ichigo. She wasn't able to take note of what was going on, but she heard a or two thrown. Maybe it was his dad.

* * *

So, yeah, you can give me ideas on how to continue this story. Don't worry, I'll be sure to give you credit. I do have my own story line for this, but if you guys want to add anything in, I'll be happy to consider it.


End file.
